If you are an avid fan of manga, then the name Yukito Kishiro, will most definitely not sound alien to you. Japanese manga artist, Kishiro, needs no introduction. After all, he is the man who gave us classics like ‘Kikai’ and ‘Battle Angel Alita’. If you are still scratching your heads wondering what’s so special about the ones mentioned above or what is manga in the first place, trust me folks, you are missing out on one of the best things in the world.
Don’t worry guys, Hollywood has decided to take care of the former part, i.e. introducing you to one of Kishiro’s critically acclaimed manga series, by turning it into a movie adaptation. With the names like James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez associated with it, we can already imagine how kickass the movie is going to be. In fact, this bomb of a trailer dropped by 20th Century Fox proves that we are not wrong.
© 20th Century Fox
Set in the 26th century, this movie revolves around Alita, an amnesiac female cyborg, who was rescued from a scrapyard by Dr. Ido (played by Christoph Waltz). Alita has no memory of her past or why she is so special. How she eventually unravels her past, while beating the shit out of vicious criminals and evil forces, weaves the rest of the story.Don’t get deceived by her looks. She might look like a doll or a harmless cyborb, but her badassery shows how deadly this woman can be for her enemies.
Check out the trailer here.
Had it been an animated movie, we would not have raised our eyebrows or felt weird about our protagonist’s facial features – particularly her haunting eyes. Honestly, throughout the trailer it was very hard to look away from her eyes, not because it was love at first sight or something, but because they were unimaginably BIG. Let’s give a shout out to the VFX team of this movie, who turned a real life actress into a spitting image of an animated character.
We couldn’t believe our eyes either and would have continued considering her an animated character, had we not come across the credits. The character of Alita (who looks like an anime character) is played by Rosa Salazar, who was made to look like a cyborg, thanks to the use CGI. Maybe, it’s an intentional choice to remind people throughout the movie that she is not human.
Well, at least Salazar was in safe hands and not the ones who spent $25 million to airbrush Henry Superman Cavill’s moustache that made him look like Shrek’s white brother.
© 20th Century Fox
Robert Rodriguez, who has earlier given us classics like ‘Sin City’, ‘Machete’, ‘Spy Kids’ and ‘From Dusk till Dawn’, will put on the director’s hat for this project that has been in talks for more than a decade now. James Cameron, who was earlier helming the movie before taking up ‘Avatar’, will now take on the role of the producer.
‘Alita: Battle Angel’ also stars Eiza Gonzalez, Jennifer Connelly, Michelle Rodriguez, Mahershala Ali and Casper Van Dien. The bug-eyed…sorry…we mean ‘big-eyed’ heroine is coming to blow yours minds away on July 20, 2018.